MauiRainbow Bridge, Maui Wowie

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Always seeking a utopian escape, some of its members fled to Maui, where these transplanted pot smugglers turned to big-wave surfing, created Maui Waui, and appeared in the film Rainbow Bridge with Jimi Hendrix, whom they dosed with a DMT-laced joint during his performance.

In Mexico, Padilla ran a hacienda for Papa, overseeing the processing and distribution of the pot brought in by local farmers. For more than a year, he skimmed off the best bud and seeds. Meanwhile, he kept alive his dream of sailing to an island. The dream came true when he and a few associates from the Brotherhood bought a 70-foot yacht in St. Thomas called the Jafje. The Jafje met Padilla in the summer of 1970 in the busy port of Manzanillo. From there, it set sail for Maui. “It was five guys who had never sailed in their lives,” says Padilla. On board was a ton of the Mexican weed. The trip should have taken less than two weeks. A month into it, one of the guys onboard, a smuggler with Brotherhood roots named Joe Angeline, noticed the stars weren’t right. “He said, ‘Eddie, Orion’s belt should be right over our heads.’ But Orion’s belt was way, way south of us. We could barely make it out.” When confronted, the captain confessed he didn’t know where the hell they were, but had been afraid to tell them. “There’s a hoist that hoists you all the way up to the top of the main mast and we hauled him up there and made him sit there for a day,” says Padilla. “That was funny.” Eventually, they flagged down a freighter and learned they were more than a 1000 miles off course, dangerously close to the Japanese current. The freighter gave them 300 gallons of fuel and put them back on track to Maui. He’d made it to his island with a load of the finest Mexican marijuana. “The seeds of that,” Padilla says, “became Maui Wowie.”Spiritual Warrior Maui Wowie? The holy grail of my pot-smoking youth, one of the most famous strains of marijuana in history? When Padilla tells me he played a major role in its advent, my already-strained credulity nears the breaking point. I spend months looking into Padilla’s stories, tracking down survivors, digging up what corroborative evidence I can. And, well, he basically checks out. But there are his stories and there is his narrative—how an acid trip on Mount Palomar transformed a 21-year-old borderline sociopath into a man with a purpose, a messenger of peace and love.That one’s harder to swallow. While sitting over coffee at the dining room table in his son’s apartment, Padilla finally tells a couple stories that beg me to challenge him. Back in the mid-‘60s, he and John Griggs make a deal to purchase a few kilos of pot from a source in Pacoima. They drive out in a station wagon with 18 grand to make the buy. But the sellers burn them and take off with their money in a black Cadillac. The next day, Padilla and spiritual leader Griggs go back armed with a .38 and a .32. Padilla goes into the apartment where the deal was supposed to go down and finds one of the men sleeping on the couch. The guy wakes up and makes for a Winchester rifle sitting near the sink. Padilla runs up behind him and sticks the barrel of his gun in the guy’s ear and says, “Dude, please don’t make me fucking shoot you.” Griggs and Padilla get their money back. “So, that stuff went on. I’ve been shot at. People have tried to kill me. I’ve had bullets whizzing by my ear,” he says. “But I’ve never had to shoot anybody.” Padilla tells me of similar episodes in Maui where the locals, understandably, see the influx of the hippie mafia as encroachment on their turf. They set about intimidating the haoles from Laguna, often violently. One newcomer is shot in the head while he sleeps next to his son. At his house on the Haleakala Crater one night, Padilla opens the door to let in his barking puppy only to find “there’s a guy standing there with a pillow case over his head and holes cut out and the guy behind him was taller and had a pager bag with the holes cut out.” One of the men has a handgun. Padilla manages to slam the gunman’s hand in the door and chase off the invaders. “I’m going to kill both of you,” he yells after them. “I’m going to find out who you are and kill you.” Padilla discovers the men work for a hood he knew back in Huntington Beach called Fast Eddie. Like a scene out of a gangster movie, Padilla and Fast Eddie have a showdown when Fast Eddie, in a car full of local muscle, tries to run Padilla and his passenger off the road. They all end up in Lahaina, where Fast Eddie’s henchmen beat up Padilla pretty good before the cops break up the brawl. More - http://slake.la/features/the-pirate-of-penance

The Encyclopedia Of Surfing By Matt Warshaw

Maalaea, what an awesome wave

In late 1969, early 1970, Brotherhood of Eternal Love members living in Maui bought a 70ft wooden yacht named the Aafje as part of a plan to smuggle the biggest load of Afghan hash they had ever done (1000's of lbs). As a way of raising money to purchase the hash from the Tokhi brothers in Afghanistan, they planned to use the Aafje to smuggle 6000 lbs of the best Mexican colitas from a man named "Papa"... in Sinaloa and bring it back to Maui and sell it raise the money. After numerous problems, including an arrest in Mexico, having to repair the ship at sea so it didn't sink, and going of course in a storm, the Aafje finally arrived in Mexico with 6000lbs of primo Mexican, the very best there was at the time. This was called the "Lightening Bolt" weed, due to one BEL member in Mexico remarking how one cola looked like a lightening bolt. BEL members were smoking this "lightening bolt" weed all over Maui, tossing seeds everywhere. Some BEL members even began planting seeds, which led to a strain called "Kula Crippler" after the area of Maui it was grown. The "Kula Crippler" came from a seed brought back in bales of weed used to make hash by the Tokhi brothers from Afghanistan on a previous hash smuggling mission. These two strains, the Mexican "Lightening Bolt" and the Afghani "Kula Crippler" were crossed by a surfer from Santa Barbara, and quickly Kula was covered with this NEW crossbred strain. It was so good that BEL members began smuggling it back to California. This new strain was the now world famous "Maui Wowie" named in honor of where it was created.

The Aafje met up with Eddie Padilla at Manzanillo in early 1970. It had been sailed from St. Thomas, and it was now crewed by a half dozen other Brotherhood of Eternal Love members – who had never sailed before in their lives. Eddie had been working for the last year or so, with “Papa” – Pedro Aviles Perez. “Papa” was the Sinaloan marijuana supplier of the Brotherhood. It had been Eddie’s dream to purchase a boat, which he planned to use to smuggle hashish from Pakistan back to the States. Eddie referred to himself as a “spiritual warrior” and the purchase of the boat signified, to him, a fulfilling of a dream. That dream, apparently began with loading up the Aafje with over 1500 kilograms of the best Sinaloan marijuana, while it stood anchor just outside the twelve mile limit. Motor launch after motor launch disgorged their loads to the stately old Aafje, and then, with Eddie and all that “Maui Wowie” material now aboard – they set sail for Maui.

This is the story of a wooden motor yacht (a schooner) named Aafje, and the adventures she has seen…

Our story begins with “Ted” Geary, her designer. Now, Ted Geary was not just a designer and sailor, he is best remembered for his large, handsome, and elegantly appointed wooden motoryachts. Quite some famous individuals (or infamous – in some cases) commissioned him to build their boats, or bought one that was made by him. Errol Flynn, being one colorful example that comes to mind. It was quite difficult to piece together the details about Ted’s schooner, the Aafje, but it seems to have began life sometime in 1921 or 1922. Ted built her for railroad magnate F.C. Hubbell, her first owner.

Dad’s next sailing schooner was the Aafje, another Geary-designed schooner, a little heavier tonnage-wise than the Katedna, although shorter, at 58 feet. I don’t have any recollection or knowledge of my father actually sailing on any of these boats, but I presume he did.

Apparently, the name Aafje means “the good one” in Dutch. She sailed south early in her career, and had several owners over the years – most of which I have been able to reconstruct.

But first, she entered a race…a regatta as it was called.

The Pacific International Regatta at Seattle, July 24-29, 1922

“Ted” Geary, sailing the new schooner Aafje, designed by him and recently completed by him for F.C. Hubbell of Des Moines, Iowa, had his troubles during the early stages of the race. In the bay the boat had just sufficient way to answer her helm slowly and she gradually edged through tidal and weather conditions and was a thorough test of motor reliability and navigating skill.

A later owner, Robert E. Milsap, skippered her to a win on the return leg of the TransPac – the Trans-Pacific race – in 1928. An ebayer was selling a silver bowl that commemorated this event. The Aafje had sailed from Long Beach, California to the Hawaiian Islands and back!

=== The next later owner of the Aafje was Santa Barbara man Dwight L. Faulding, who was killed by modern day “pirates” in 1938. After all that business, Errol Flynn expressed an interest in the Aafje –

In early 1938 he announced an interest in purchasing a yacht named aafje which had been the recent scene of a gruesome piracy murder. Flynn said the craft’s melodramatic history appealed to his sense of adventure, but this sounds like more posturing for the press. In any event, he never purchased the yacht.

And now the Aafje goes to the Brotherhood - .The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was formed within a week of MKULTRA LSD supplier Bear Owsley’s arrest – which made headlines back in the late 1960′s. “Griggs” as he was most often called, had spent some time that summer with Timothy Leary, at the Hitchcock estate (Mellon financial mogul family). Timothy had suggested that he start his own religion, and incorporate as a Church. That is precisely what Griggs did. Their objective was, as stated in their incorporation papers:“to bring to the world a greater awareness of God through the teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Babaji, Paramahansa Yogananda, Mahatma Gandhi, and all true prophets and apostles of God, and to spread the love and wisdom of these great teachers to all men…. We believe this church to be the earthly instrument of God’s will. We believe in the sacred right of each individual to commune with God in spirit and in truth as it is empirically revealed to him.” A self-styled “spiritual warrior” and Brotherhood man, Eddie Padilla would come to be the bridge between the last owner of the Aafje and… the Brotherhood, where she would be consigned, for a time, to that ignoble pursuit called drug-smuggling. Eddie was driving 500 pounds of marijuana to San Francisco one foggy night, when he had a premonition that “something wasn’t right”. It wasn’t – he was arrested the next day in what was the biggest pot bust in San Francisco’s history (at that time). In 1967, he was tried and convicted, and sentenced to five to fifteen in San Quentin. He was given 30 days to get his affairs into order. On the last day – he skipped out to Mexico, to “Papa” – Pedro Aviles Perez, the biggest drug lord in Mexico at that time.

Eddie had already come up with the idea to get a boat, his dream he called it, where he and other Brotherhood members could sail back and forth between Pakistan and the States bringing their form of “enlightenment” to the masses – LSD and HASHISH. To put it in the mildest terms, let’s just say that I do not find that believable as any kind of actual “enlightenment”, but I digress.

The Pirate of Penance originally published in Slake No. 1., Joe Donnelly, August 2, 2012 .

“On the thirtieth day, I just left and went to Mexico, went to work for some syndicate guys,” he says. “I bailed.”

Padilla’s flight was also precipitated by a schism within the Brotherhood that some trace to its ultimate demise. Acting on Leary’s advice, Griggs took the profits from a marijuana deal, funds that some Brothers thought should go toward the eventual island purchase, and bought a 400-acre ranch in Idyllwild near Palm Springs.

…To facilitate his escape to Mexico, Padilla raised funds from various Brothers and other associates to gain entree with a Mexican pot syndicate run by a kingpin called Papa. His Mexican escapades—busting partners from jail and other adventures—could make their own movie.

In Mexico, Padilla ran a hacienda for Papa, overseeing the processing and distribution of the pot brought in by local farmers. For more than a year, he skimmed off the best bud and seeds. Meanwhile, he kept alive his dream of sailing to an island.

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By early 1970, Padilla and a few other Brotherhood associates had successfully brokered the purchase of the Aafje, and the Aafje arrived from St. Thomas to meet up with him at Manzanillo.

Jimmy Dale, Joe Angeline, and Malcolm – all Brotherhood men – were on board, and had anchored offshore outside the twelve mile limit.

Padilla had his “Papa” men bring the pot out to the boat, with motor launch after motor launch arriving and dropping off their valuable cargo.

“It was five guys who had never sailed in their lives,” said Padilla in an interview.

Now on board was 1500 kilograms of the Mexican weed, that would come to be known as “Maui Wowie”.

So, off they went – setting sail for Maui.

The trip should have taken less than two weeks. A month into it, one of the guys onboard, a smuggler with Brotherhood roots named Joe Angeline, noticed the stars weren’t right. – The Pirate of Penance was originally published in Slake No. 1., Joe Donnelly, August 2, 2012

As you might have noticed, the length of this schooner is constantly being named wrong, anywhere from 25 feet to 96 feet, and there are somewhat conflicting reports of this particular meet-up.

Seven members instead of five, 96 foot yacht, standing off “Zapategas” which I couldn’t even find what the heck that is referring to…

Book, Brotherhood of Eternal Love, 1984

“Seven of the Brothers were to be found crewing a 96-foot yacht off of the western coast of Mexico in 1970. Most had previously got no nearer the sea than the surf at Laguna, but they had successfully brought their vessel out of Maui in Hawaii, across the Pacific to stand off Zapategas outside the twelve-mile limit.

This was no pleasure cruise, as the yacht lay anchored a convoy of small launches put out from the shore, roaring across the open sea and tossing in the swell. The Brothers lined the rails as the first of the launches cut its engine, bobbing gently. Tied alongside the yacht, Mexicans on board the launch began to pass up bales. The yacht took on board 1,500 kilos of best Mexican marijuana before hauling up anchor and turning westwards back to Maui. The yacht was only one way of moving marijuana in bulk without meeting the pribnlems and risks of overland travel. There were plans to use a couple of battered DC3s to move it up from Mexico and South America. Perhaps one day the same could be done for cargoes from Afghanistan or the Middle East, where the Brothers had discovered the potential of Lebanon.”

25 foot yacht…(which is just wrong)

Nick Schou weekly – this particular entry contradicts his later book even!

…several of Griggs’ foot soldiers had just escaped to Maui from the increasing heat in Dodge City on a 25-foot yacht loaded with 6,000 pounds of Mexican pot­ the cultivars of which would become the legendary “Maui Wowie”­and arrived in the tropics like conquering warriors in a royal canoe.

Griggs and the rest of his crew were psychedelic warriors who had turned on with acid and tuned in to a newfound sense of spiritual purpose. Instead of dropping out of society, they created their own version of it, one that they hoped to single-handedly spread through their entire generation. Their goal: turn on the entire world. First the police and later Rolling Stone magazine would brand them the “Hippie Mafia.”

See what I mean?

Travis Ashbrook, another brotherhood member, had been waiting for them in Maui for two weeks. A trip that should have taken a month was now much longer, and he was worried. Malcolm, had messed up the navigation and they had ended up hundreds of miles off course. The other Brotherhood members were pissed, and tied him up in the crows nest for a while because of it! They eventually got it figured out, and arrived in Hana, Maui, in approximately late April/May.

Only a couple months or so later, Jimi Hendrix showed up to give a free concert on July 30, 1970 – supporting the Brotherhood lifestyle and agenda, and their “Rainbow Boards”. Which, by the way, were carefully constructed by Brotherhood member Hynson to have secret hiding places for smuggling hashish into the U.S. in.

The Hendrix concert was on the slopes of the Haleakala Volcano near Makawao, “immortalized in what many consider to be the most spectacularly bizarre film of the countercultural era, the 1972 film Rainbow Bridge.”

Later that same year, (1970) on a 3-day riotous and apacolyptic celebration of Jesus Christ’s Birthday (Christmas) back in the U.S. – the Brotherhood had a plane drop a full cargo of their product, a super-LSD called Orange Sunshine over a crowd of 25,000 concertgoers in Laguna Canyon, just up the hill from Dodge City. – Nick Schou weekly

One other thing – the only mention I could find of the later fate of the Aafje, is a much later reference to that the Brotherhood’s lawyer, George Chula, (apparently a “gangsta” type) was given the boat in payment for his services some time after 1980 – but it’s not totally clear, and not named.

“Now information comes from Ramsey about George Chula, the Brotherhood attorney. Ramsey made special note of the fact that while he was in Chula’s office to meet a Brotherhood member, the secretaries in the office did not recognize the member by name. Ramsey overheard them conversing, and one of the secretaries mentioned to the other that had Ramsey referred to the member as Number Four, she would have known what he was talking about. The indication was that members of the Brotherhood were listed by numerical files rather than by names in Chula’s office and that when they contacted Chula, all they had to do was give him a number and Chula would know who he was talking to.

- note that Brotherhood members are numbered – like a code

Ramsey described Chula as “a gangster type.”"Ramsey said that Chula was on large permanent retainer from the Brotherhood and that he obtained a boat that was given to him by the Brotherhood, a large sailboat in payment for past services.

And there you have it – the first written history of the Schooner – the Aafje.